There are a variety of apparatus for supporting sport practice targets, each of which consist of a sheet of flexible material which is secured to a support structure. The following patents are examples of such apparatus: CA 1,140,180, CA 2,118,256, U.S. Pat. No. 5,277,430, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,876,291. This type of apparatus can be used with any type of sport that involves propelling a projectile at a target area, such as baseball, soccer, golf, and hockey. Mounted on the sheet of flexible material are targets appropriate to the selected sport. CA 2,118,256 is intended for hockey practice and illustrates as a target a hockey goalie. U.S. Pat. No. 5,876,291 is intended for golf practice and illustrates a fairway with a distant green serving as the target. There are a variety of support structures that could be used to support such an apparatus. One commonly depicted is a garage door opening. The reason for this is that a garage door opening is available in many homes and is of a size that will accommodate targets for most sports activities.
The problem with the sports practice apparatus, as describe above, is that they are time consuming to mount to the selected support structure. They, typically, have grommets that enable them to be tied in place around their peripheral edges with ties. More often than not, a father only has a brief window of opportunity of twenty or thirty minutes to play hockey on the driveway with his children or hit a few practice golf balls. When the window of opportunity for sports practice presents itself, it is not practical if the sports practice apparatus takes ten minutes to mount to the support structure. It is even worse when the support structure is the garage door opening, for the another ten minutes must be spent in taking the sports practice apparatus down so it does not obstruct the garage door opening.